This fund is for journalists who cover a lot of territory with limited resources. It has one main purpose: To help unearth important stories that otherwise won’t get told. R-CAR fellows spend five days learning how to build and query databases at Investigative Reporters & Editors Inc. in Columbia, Mo. They emerge with the tools to convert spreadsheets into sources. Fellows are chosen based on their journalistic ability, motivation, and ideas to pursue stories of consequence for their communities. (more…)

Kate Martin (right) of the Skagit Valley Herald, in Mt. Vernon, Wash., was the inaugural recipient of the Fund for Rural Computer Assisted Reporting fellowship. She attended the Investigative Reporters and Editors' six-day boot camp in March of 2011. Below is ...

Twelve journalists from five states and Washington, D.C., learned computer-assisted reporting or honed their basic CAR skills at a workshop at the University of Kentucky, sponsored by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues and Investigative Re...

By DANIEL GILBERT of The Wall Street Journal:
The idea for this fund began with an obscure government board and $23 million that had largely escaped scrutiny for 20 years.
Lax oversight by understaffed agencies is not peculiar to any state or communit...